A smoke detector alerted a family of five living in a Fluvanna County doublewide that caught fire, but not until flames were already present, says Fluvanna Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Brent. The fire broke out sometime before dawn on Tuesday, September 30 in a family room of the home on Shores Road. Although investigators could not pinpoint a source, Brent says, officials believe it was an electrical fire caused either by a cell phone plugged in and charging or by the couch itself, which was heated. All five family members– two adults and three children– escaped unharmed.

Fire officials did not identify the type of detector present; however that fact that it didn’t sound until there were flames suggests (more)

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Blue Ridge Outdoors owner Blake DeMaso says hard times for business are great times for the outdoors.
FILE PHOTO BY LINCOLN BARBOUR

Times are tough for publications these days. Just ask Creative Loafing, the alt-newspaper chain that filed for bankruptcy last month, or read any number of articles on declining circulation among even the biggest names in news.

But all this doom and gloom doesn’t have Blue Ridge Outdoors owner Blake DeMaso down. In fact, he’s so optimistic he’s launching a new monthly magazine to cover outdoor life in Colorado. Based in Boulder, Elevation Outdoors will hit stands throughout Colorado in February, and DeMaso is confident the time is right.

“Historically, outdoor markets do well during recession times,” says DeMaso. “People tend to go outside instead of taking bigger vacations, they’ll go hiking or biking.” Because Elevation will, like Blue Ridge Outdoors, be a free publication, “we’re well positioned (more)

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To make room for parking and a multi-purpose field supporting a proposed YMCA at McIntire Park, City Council voted May 19 to destroy the two softball fields.
FILE PHOTO BY RYAN HOOVER

Despite a top administrator’s attempt to focus the last Albemarle County Board of Supervisors’ public meeting on lighting the softball fields at jointly owned Darden Towe Park, the conversation returned time and time again to the impending demise of softball at the City’s McIntire Park.

“This decision is about Towe, not McIntire Park,” Albemarle Parks & Recreation director Pat Mullaney said October 8.

But from the get-go, the discussion centered on McIntire, with Supervisors’ chair Ken Boyd immediately disagreeing with Mullaney, saying, “I know it isn’t about McIntire Park, but in actuality, it is.

“We do have a say-so in the City’s decision,” Boyd continued, “as we’d cover the cost of three-fourths of $700,000 in lighting.”

While outspoken Towe neighbor Clara Belle Wheeler spoke out against lighting a traditionally rural area, the other 15 public participants— including Bob Fenwick of the Save McIntire campaign, Chad Day of the Charlottesville Sports and Social Club, and (more)

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Charlottesville crimes, as found via new reports.
SpotCrime.com

UVA grad Colin Drane had what he thought would be a solid-gold idea: A website where you could see all the crime in your neighborhood or on your street. What he didn’t foresee: How reluctant police are to give out that information.

In January, Drane launched SpotCrime.com and a companion site, UCrime.com, to map crime around universities. So far, he says he has sites in over 180 cities and at 200 universities.

“SpotCrime has the largest accessible crime database in the world,” says Drane. And by accessible, he means available to Joe Citizen.

Drane, an economics/philosophy major who graduated from the University of Virginia in 1992, now lives in Baltimore, which he says has the second-highest per capita crime rate of any city in the United States. “That’s kind of where my interest in tracking crime came,” he says. “I live in the city and want my family safe.”

He launched Spotcrime.com and UCrime.com here yesterday, shortly after Charlottesville police declined to provide him with the daily incident report it emails (more)

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The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia
PHOTOS COURTESY RED HEN

Back in January, aspiring restaurateur John Blackburn told Dish he was looking for a talented chef willing to “flee the big 5-star kitchens” of Charlottesville for Lexington, where Blackburn has finally opened the Red Hen, a gastro-pub style restaurant in a renovated 150-year old former chapel.

“I’m hoping to identify and hire a chef in the next five months to take this on and make it her/his baby,” said Blackburn. “In other words, we’re looking for somebody who wants more than just a job.”

Well, that willing chef turned out to be OXO’s ex- empresario Tucker Yoder.

“I was blown away by how fast news traveled after that Hook piece,” says Blackburn. ” I got resumes from DC, New York, and one from Aspen. Ultimately, Tucker fit the profile we were looking for… smart, sane, ambitious, and ridiculously talented.”

However, it appears that Blackburn, founding editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors and a former journalist for C-Ville Weekly in the early days, was not content to lure just one (more)

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Charlottesville’s America’s Next Top Model contender, Lauren Brie Harding, was eliminated from competition last night after becoming one of the final eight contestants. Harding, who had been criticized for a lack of personality in her photos in past weeks, was again singled out for being “pretty, but empty,” according to hostess Tyra Banks. Accused of being “bland” by fellow model Sheena, Harding struggled to let her personality shine through her photo shoot at the Orpheum Theater in L.A. While the judges deliberated over her photo, they commented, “Week by week, she should be getting better, not sliding back.” Harding was eliminated over Sheena, whose outgoing persona won out over Harding’s pretty pictures. America’s Next Top Model continues with seven contestants next Wednesday at 8pm on the CW. #

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Crutchfield wants the water plan to start from scratch.
FILE PHOTO BY LINDSAY BARNES

On a day when a new letter [DOC] from electronics magnate Bill Crutchfield began circulating, the controversial 50-year community water supply plan came under increased scrutiny from Charlottesville mayor Dave Norris and other City Councilors.

“I strongly agree that better numbers are needed for all components,” Norris said in a Monday, October 6 email.

At that evening’s City Council meeting, his colleagues Satyendra Huja and Julian Taliaferro also indicated that recent numbers emerging from the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority are giving Council, which owns the land on which a new dam would be built, some pause.

On September 22, the RWSA, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, unveiled new studies that claimed there are fissures in the underlying bedrock and that its preliminary figures were so far off that the dam might end up costing as much as $99 million instead of the $37 million preliminary figure.

“It kinda bothers me,” Taliaferro said after the most recent Council meeting. “I’ve never seen numbers change like this.”

A week after that debacle, the Hook revealed that, whatever the cost, the new dam would be nearly worthless as water supply without an electricity-dependent pipeline that has (more)

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Barbara Shifflett Morris escorts second hubby Butch Morris to a September preliminary hearing.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

Alvin “Butch” Morris, the man accused in the 1988 murder of Roger Lee Shifflett, was indicted by a grand jury yesterday and is scheduled for trial April 13, 2009, on first-degree murder, robbery and use of a weapon in commission of a felony charges. Morris married Shifflett’s widow, Barbara, shortly after the father of five was slain at the Southwind Gas and Grocery on Route 20 south.

At a September 18 preliminary hearing, Morris’ DNA on a cigarette butt found at the crime scene, his conflicting stories to police and his first wife’s testimony led a judge to find probable cause and move the case to the grand jury.

UPDATE: Terry in the Albemarle Clerk’s office says the trial starts April 13.

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Michael Wilbon, seen here on the set, has co-hosted ESPN’s daily talk show Pardon the Interruption since 2001.
PHOTO BY BEN GOODNIGHT/FLICKR

It turns out that not everyone in the national media was against the ban on signs at UVA sporting events. A month after his colleague Rick Reilly said Mr. Jefferson’s University was guilty of “good ol’ fashioned totalitarianism” for the clampdown on signs, Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption Michael Wilbon came down in favor of the erstwhile ban yesterday.

Responding to a question about the ban in a live chat on the Post website, Wilbon said, “I wish they’d kept the ban. Signs get in everybody else’s way, which is mostly self-indulgent. Why do people feel the need to do everything except watch the game? Drink to excess, hold up signs…for what?

“I don’t get it,” Wilbon continued. “I don’t want to have to ask some inconsiderate person in front of me to put down his stupid sign so I can see the game I paid to see. Sorry.”

On Thursday, October 2, UVA announced it was (more)

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